Episode 80: How The Orion Survey Can Make Hiring EASY With Bill Gelderman

Bella welcomes guest, Bill Gelderman, the President of the Steering Group. He not only founded The Steering Group in 1995, he is also a Certified Professional Behavioral and Values Analyst, a Certified Attribute Index Analyst. He also has certifications in the renowned TriMetrix and DNA Systems. Find out more about Bill on his website www.thesteeringgroup.com Show Highlights What is the ORION Survey and why should all pet sitters use it for hiring? [3:30] How ACCURATE is the Orion survey about potential hires? [6:00] What is the best way for pet sitters to use the Orion tool? [11:00] What does the REPORT look like from an applicant's survey and how can business owners interpret it? [12:45] How can pet sitters use the Orion survey as a MARKETING TOOL? [18:45] Tweetables [Tweet "The quality of candidates in the pet sitting world is MUCH better than in my other business." -Bill Gelderman, The Steering Group"] [Tweet "Hiring is such an intimidating, convoluted, confusing, and scary process because you could be sued""] [Tweet "I've never heard anyone say 'I love to hire ... it's such a fun process.'"] Special Offer As a gift to our audience, Bill will offer $50 OFF the Orion enrollment fee for anyone signing up before April 30th if they mention Bella. Don't delay! Share The Show: Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link –Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: Bella:This is episode 80 of Bella in Your Business. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella's got your chute. Let's jump. Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting, and today I have Bill Gelderman with you guys. You may have heard in the Facebook groups talk about the Orion test so many times, and I have been waiting to get you on the show for so long. I am so excited to bring you to my audience. For those of you who don't know, Bill Gelderman founded the Searing Group in 1995. He sought ways to improve the success rates of general quality in hiring. Hiring is a big topic for many of our listeners. Back in the 90s, assessments weren't widely known, so he did a lot of educating. Today, virtually every Fortune 500 company is using assessments as part of their selection or development process. Bill, along with his son Joe, has been supplying the Orion system since 1996. They specialize in companies supplying in-home services like pet sitters, maid services, and home health services. They represent the bulk of the clientele that Bill deals with. The Searing Group has clients in every single state except for Montana. So if you're listening from Montana, call Bill up because he'd love to say every state. Bill, without further ado, welcome to the show. Bill:Thank you, Bella. Glad to be here. Bella:Why don't you go ahead and just fill in those gaps for me? How did you get so excited about this employee background check, for lack of a better word, and really helping employers and being such a service to them? Where does this passion sprout from? Bill:Well, it started when I was hiring people myself. One year I saw that the file of terminated employees was four or five times deeper than the file of current employees. I realized that while I thought I was good at interviewing and hiring people, I wasn't as good as I thought I was. I saw an ad in a trade publication and responded to it and started using it, and it truly changed my whole world. Instead of constantly running ads, interviewing, training, and then repeating that process over and over again, I was actually able to hire the right people the first time, get them trained, get them productive, and be able to spend my time on money-making things as opposed to just going through that grind of constantly retraining people over and over again. Bella:Right, because one of the horrible parts of hiring and interviewing is figuring out if that person on the other side of the desk is lying through their teeth and telling you what you want to hear, or maybe if you're giving away everything that you want to hear. Having a test—and I've actually used your product in my own company. In fact, I challenged your product, Bill. Your product told me not to hire someone and I did, and I made a big mistake. So I really knew that this podcast alone is going to be one of the most popular ones because this is such valuable information for anyone that's hiring. So can you give us a brief overview of what the system actually is? Bill:I have to correct you from using the term “test.” It’s a service. When you use the term test, that implies there are right and wrong answers, and there really aren’t. There are 80 questions, and what it’s looking at is this person’s attitude toward being supervised—can they accept the fact that somebody else is going to tell them what to do? It looks at tardiness and attendance. It examines the likelihood of them using drugs at work. We don’t care if they smoke a joint on the weekend or whatever, but we want to know their attitude about using drugs while they’re on the job. Then it explores the likelihood of them stealing from you or your client. In the pet sitting, maid service, and home health worlds, they are easy targets—nobody is home, or in the case of home health, there’s a child or impaired adult who can’t protect themselves. Then we’re looking at other factors for long-term employment, like the person’s attitude about customer service and their attitude about safety and risk. Bella:These are all really amazing things that a lot of business owners would love to know about the person they’re hiring before they hire them—before they have to trial and error this themselves. Tell me, how does an employer actually know if they can believe what this report’s telling them, Bill? Bill:The reports are 90% accurate. There is no silver bullet 100% accurate report. It’s never been developed, but 90% is awfully good. One of the very first things when you look at the report is the validity index. That tells you how much you can count on this report to be accurate. The validity index is broken into three levels—category one, two, and three. Seventy percent of the reports come back level one, meaning they’re considered low risk in the sense that we can believe what we’re about to read, whether it’s good or bad. About 20% come back marginal, meaning the person may consciously or subconsciously have answered some questions the way they thought you wanted them to. And about 10% come back high risk, which means don’t believe any of it—it’s all garbage. They were lying through their teeth, or for our purposes, they were illiterate. For this report, illiterate means they can’t read and comprehend at the seventh or eighth-grade level, whether in English or Spanish. Bella:That’s so interesting. I think a lot of business owners, when they think about tests, and I know this isn’t technically a test, but they think of personality tests—like, are you outgoing or introverted? And for our listeners, I want you to understand that this is not only surveying the things Bill was just saying—about supervision, tardiness, attendance, theft, safety, and risk—but also determining whether they’re being honest with you or not. I’ve never seen anything like that ever. It’s amazing that this takes it to that extra level. So why do you call it a survey versus a test? Bill:There are 80 questions, and you’re being assessed on your feelings about them. Statistically valid patterns emerge from the answers. Essentially, we’re asking the same eight questions in different ways. If at one time you say you feel strongly that something’s okay, and later you say it’s terrible, there’s no consistency, and we know you’re trying to play both ends. The word “test” implies right or wrong, and that becomes threatening. “Survey” softens it and makes it less intimidating. Bella:That makes total sense. Bill, I love this conversation. I’ve got to take a quick commercial break. But when we come back, I want to know about when we should give our candidates this survey. [Commercial break.] Bella:And I’m back with Bill Gelderman, and we’re talking all about the Orion survey. Bill, when in the hiring process should we actually administer the survey? Bill:You want to give it as early as possible, before the candidate thinks you like them. When you talk to them—if you phone screen them—never use words like good, great, wonderful, or terrific. Whatever they tell you, just say okay. Keep your phone screen questions to knockout questions. Once they pass those, invite them to come in “to begin the process.” Don’t call it an interview, because if you do and the report shows bad results, you’ll feel obligated to interview them. So say “begin the process.” Then you can review their application and results before deciding whether to proceed. Bella:That’s pivotal—just changing the verbiage. I remember the survey even gave me follow-up questions to ask. Bill:Yes, the report comes in two forms. The short form gives you a snapshot to help you decide if you want to move forward. If you do, the long form spells out questions where they didn’t answer appropriately and gives you an opportunity to dig deeper. For example, one question says, “A person who takes $5 from their employer is a thief.” Believe it or not, people will disagree. The report then prompts you to ask, “Why did you disagree with that statement?” Bella:That’s incredible. Because as interviewers, we all talk too much and don’t listen enough. Having a guide like this is so helpful, especially when you can ask questions that candidates never expect.